exclusive Dresden circles. Such a work, would, I believe, have a
large sale, and be read with satisfaction and reassurance by many
lovers of Wagner's music.

As to my much demurred-to relegation of Night Falls On The Gods
to the category of grand opera, I have nothing to add or
withdraw. Such a classification is to me as much a matter of fact
as the Dresden rising or the police proclamation; but I shall not
pretend that it is a matter of such fact as everybody's judgment
can grapple with. People who prefer grand opera to serious
music-drama naturally resent my placing a very grand opera below
a very serious music-drama. The ordinary lover of Shakespeare
would equally demur to my placing his popular catchpenny plays,
of which As You Like It is an avowed type, below true
Shakespearean plays like Measure for Measure. I cannot help that.
Popular dramas and operas may have overwhelming merits as
enchanting make-believes; but a poet's sincerest vision of the
world must always take precedence of his prettiest fool's
paradise.

As many English Wagnerites seem to be still under the impression
that Wagner composed Rienzi in his youth, Tannhauser and
Lohengrin in his middle age, and The Ring in his later years, may
I again remind them that The Ring was the result of a political
convulsion which occurred when Wagner was only thirty-six, and
that the poem was completed when he was forty, with thirty more
years of work before him? It is as much a first essay in
political philosophy as Die Feen is a first essay in romantic
opera. The attempt to recover its spirit twenty years later, when
the music of Night Falls On The Gods was added, was an attempt to